Regardless of how well the mechanical problems are handled at the 2 nuclear power plants, you just know this is going to set nuclear power movement back at least 50 years in the west. ><
Edit: Also I wonder how the flat earthers would explain the tsunami's hitting Hawaii...
Evacuations for Fukushima No.1 and No.2 expanded to 20 km.
I really think it should be further, but I think they do too. I just don't think they have the ability to evac as far back as they want due to all the damage and downed transport systems and whatnot.
I can't imagine even 10km is easy for them to deal with in two zones both heavily damaged already. If Japan gets another m8+ (especially closer to land) it's gonna be game over for them.
Edit: Not listening to CNN atm, but hearing they confirmed the coolant was all vaporized in reactor 1 (nothing to slow it even if it's not melted already), and that the cooling system has failed totally for reactor 2.
Hi guys. Ah yes, here comes the nuclear power media sensationalism. One of those days where I know I'm going to hate my job for all the people crying out over it.
While we don't know the extent of the damage quite yet, the levels of radiation received by workers at the plants themselves remains minimal and the plants are commencing controlled releases to mitigate rising pressures due to failures of emergency cooling systems some time after the quakes due to damage incurred. The containments themselves have not been breached at this time, and a breach is unlikely to occur.
There appears to have been transfer of contaminant due to increases noted in rising levels at the cooling towers and discharge areas (not necessarily unexpected due to these being BWR (boiling water reactor) units vice PWR (pressurized water reactor) units). According to WNN, a worker has been known to have received a dose of 106mSv which is far below the line required for immediate radiation sickness (acute doses of 1000mSv are required for that, and even then death is unlikely)(should also be noted that 106mSv is around 2x the dose a radiation worker is allowed to receive in a calendar year, but several times under that which is likely to cause injury to organs (need about 5x as much as s/he received)). We don't know why he received that dose either (where was s/he at, what was s/he doing, etc).
For an up-to-date look at what is happening to the power plants, go here. The right hand yellow column shows the current status of all reactor plants affected and is updated every few hours.
We still don't have any word yet on what the explosion was from, but the media is really taking this over and beyond.
Also, yes, it is impossible for a reactor to have a nuclear explosion. It cannot happen. I know I've covered this before in the LHC thread, but Chernobyl-4 was a combination of a steam explosion followed by a Hydride reaction of the superheated cladding/fuel/water mixture. A meltdown is possible but given the information currently out by IAEA and WNN I'm not seeing it.
We'll see after the next updates I suppose.
Japanese news reporting that the 4 Nuclear power plant workers are dead.
Edit: NVM they are alive.
The dose is confirmed to at least be a years dose in 20 minutes exposure, and pressure release through the valve was halted many hours ago due to concern for worker safety. They were looking into activating it by robot, but this explosion happened and the rod began to melt, and I never heard any more on it. This is confirmed from JEPCO (think thats the acronym).
TEPCO is the abbreviation. And what is a years dose? Who's idea of a year's dose are we talking about? I'll go out on a limb and say it's the 5 REM/50mSv one. Where is the dose out to? Dose rates fall dramatically over distance, and radiation itself is not the problem (except for the workers - it should be noted that I phrase my statements in an environmental note point not a localized note point as those of us who work at plants know our risks) - contamination is. We have no word of a contamination release, so at this point we're only dealing with localized effects in immediate vicinities of shielding and potential shielding failures, all of which concerns the public not. I've yet to see any word of meltdown from IAEA, and well they're pretty much the word on these things. It would be difficult for us to know anyway, and right now there is too much misinformation being passed around.
Um, actually, that makes no sense at all. I don't know the specific design of these plants but that really doesn't make any sense to me. For the hydrogen stripping reaction to take place in water you need some crazy high temperatures and massive power outputs to occur. The fuel rods are always in water, so for them to come into contact after overheating doesn't make sense to me. These are BWR units besides, they're designed to boil and basically do what they're doing right now in order to cope with decay heat.Originally Posted by BBC
As long as they keep adding water the issue becomes a pressure buildup, but the pressure is not from a hydrogen buildup but from steam in the containment building. Steam explosion yes, hydrogen explosion? Really depends on whether or not there was an actual meltdown and how high temperatures got, but as I said right now we don't have information that supports that. Also, yes, that steam will have radioactive contaminants (this is another feature of BWR reactors, as PWRs keep primary and secondary separate a BWR does not).
Not claiming anything either way, but they said that it was boiling off faster than they could put it in, and that 1.7m of the rod was exposed at one point (had no further elaboration on if it got worse, just the news that they couldn't keep up with it).
Edit: Anyone remember the exact time UTC that the building blew up at FUK-1? They are saying it happened during an aftershock, trying to look up the exact one.
I've got to go to work, I'm sure we'll have more concrete information later and I can try to help explain things that have developed then. I'm sure the US DoE will be releasing information too, once they've gotten confirmations.
Thanks for the info, Kryssan. It's good to get the opinion from someone that actually works with this stuff rather than constant unreliable news reports.
I believe it happened about 3:30pm local japanese time, so about 4 1/2 hours ago.
Thanks. The history shows 5 quakes between 7:30>7:54 UTC so it was one of those. They are saying these aftershocks could go on for years there.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquak...uakes_all.html
I'm trying to pick what I can out of the Japanese news, but since my g/f went home (she's japanese), it's too difficult.
I live about an hour south of Tokyo, and it was still pretty intense during the quake. The vids of the tsunami are unreal.
Thanks, my wife can speak very little Japanese (shes not JP just learned it some), but they talk too fast on the news so it's mega hard to pick out anything.
Watching that tsunami on fire instantly made me feel like I was watching 2012 in the California scene where its all on fire and the earthquake is going off @_@
Good to see you are alright! I see just now that a 6.1 has went off ~15 mins ago on the tracker (the biggest one in 9 hours). I sincerely hope that another large quake doesn't hit, but experts and the JP government seem a bit worried that it's not over.